Tag: gray wolf

No matter where people and wolves share the same landscape, conflict inevitably arises. Sometimes the conflicts are based in reality; sometimes they are not. Few animals other than wolves are able to consistently elicit in us deep emotional and political responses — responses that polarize us as stakeholders in their well-being, or polarize us as community members.

When wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rocky Mountains in 1996, from two source populations released in Yellowstone National Park and in central Idaho, it was with the understanding that they would eventually tread beyond these places and reclaim lands long lost to them. Oregon was predicted to be one of the first states to receive dispersing wolves seeking new home ranges and hunting grounds. Livestock ranchers in Oregon braced for these events with trepidation. In the spring of 1999, the first wandering wolf crossed the Snake River and into Oregon’s Hells Canyon Wilderness — the young female yearling’s arrival occured about seven years earlier than predicted. That was all it took to wake Oregonians to the possibility of wolves in their midst.

Have conservation scientists become carried away, touting the ecological benefits of wolves where there are perhaps — dare I say it? — not as many as we believe there to be? Perhaps some people in the media, and even some in science, have gotten carried away with the ecological changes that wolves are actually capable of mediating, says globally-renowned wolf biologist L. David Mech in his most recent paper “Is science in danger of sanctifying the wolf?”

Ever since the reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park, and by extension the Northern Rocky Mountain ecoregion, the role of apex predators in regulating trophic cascades has been an issue of great debate. Among the first to publish a correlation between a return of aspen and willow recruitment to stands where they’d been long absent, at the same time that wolves were reintroduced, were a pair of researchers from Oregon State University, Ripple and Beschta. They promulgated an idea dubbed the ecology of fear which postulated that the presence of wolves caused a behavioral shift in elk, leading them to graze less often in open riparian corridors where they were more likely to be attacked by wolves. Their warier behavior, and shift in browsing pressure, led to a rebound in the aspen and willow growth. It’s become a familiar, almost calcified narrative, and one that many wildlife proponents have embraced (myself included).

But in his newest paper, Mech reviews the literature both supporting and refuting wolves as the mechanism of a behaviorally-modulated trophic cascade in Yellowstone. He asserts that other factors may be at play in stimulating the willows and aspen to regrow, and that they at least deserve more serious discussion. Mech seems to feel that some conservation scientists have become so myopically focused on wolves as the mechanism of ecological change that we tend to view as positive that they are unwilling or unable to look beyond wolves for alternative or contributing factors.

I have to admit, if this paper had been written by someone other than Mech, I’d probably have not have paid as much attention to it. This is because I find myself wanting to believe the wolf-as-ecological-mediator narrative. I freely admit, I’m biased in this regard. But the fact that a wolf biologist as learned and experienced as Mech produced this definitely caught my eye. Continue reading →

Critically endangered Central European wolves have learned to use wildlife overpasses that span the major A4 autostrada in western Poland. The first hard evidence of regular overpass use by three separate wolf packs was recently documented by Dr. Robert W. Mysłajek of the Association for Nature, ‘Wolf.’ a Polish organization, and Dr. Sabina Nowak. The pair plan to formally announce their findings at the upcoming IENE 2012 International Conference in Potsdam-Berlin, Germany. {1}

This video, supplied by Mysłajek, clearly shows several wolves loping and trotting across the wildlife overpass, while the sound of vehicular engines ebb and flow in the distance:

The wolves appear to be using the overpasses during the cover of night and the light of day. A highway as large as the A4 is a major obstacle for the movement of predators such as Poland’s wolves, bears and lynx, as well as other wildlife. Which is why it is exciting that these particular wolves are using these particular overpasses. Continue reading →

The Lost Wolves of Japan is a first-rate academically-oriented text that combs through the natural and cultural history of wolves on the Japanese archipelago. Author Brett Walker is a professor of history at Montana State University who specializes in Japanese history; this book was published by the Univ. of Washington Press. He used historical research methodologies to frame an inquiry into what the Japanese wolf was, and what led to its extinction. If you like historical detail, this book serves it up in helping after generous helping.

Walker explores many different themes in The Lost Wolves of Japan, most of which are centered around people, culture, wolves and nature. He pokes and prods the relationships of these entitites to each other by using various historical lenses. He examines the near-myth of Japanese “oneness” with nature; the culture of the Ainu (an indigenous people group in the Japanese archipelago) and their spiritual reverence for wild wolves, and their close relationship with domesticated hunting dogs; how early Japanese naturalists classified the wolves and mountain dogs that populated their islands; the Japanese government’s quest to modernize their society through ranching during the early years of the Meiji Restoration (ca. 1868); and theories of wolf extinction.Continue reading →

Fladry in the wind. (Photo by Nathan Lance, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks)

Fladry has proved to be an interesting and rather low-tech tool to ward wolves away from domestic livestock in certain conditions. It consists of red flags or pennants attached to a piece of twine or thin rope at regular intervals (about 18 inches or so) and strung around a livestock corral or pen. Like all predator deterrents, it has some limitations.

For one thing, it depends upon the livestock being concentrated in one area — I’m told that it’s tough, and expensive, to string this stuff up around expansive ranges. For another, it loses its effectiveness over time as wolves become accustomed to seeing it. Part of fladry’s success, it seems, is that it’s a new object that causes wolves to become frightened of passing it. Past studies have shown that fladry can be effective in field trials for up to 60 days before wild wovles cross them (Musiani 2003).

In the race of cunning to outwit wolves, some intrepid thinkers came up with the idea of running electric current through fladry to extend its usefulness. Perhaps a little electric shock would ward wolves off for longer, the thinking went. The negative stimulus of electric current works in theory much like the electric-collar on your pooch that tests the boundaries of its yard. (Except, in the case of turbo-fladry, the goal is to keep the wolves out; whereas you want to keep your dog in, but nevermind, you catch my drift…)Continue reading →

If there is one thing you will take away from reading Wolfer: A Memoir, it’s that Carter Niemeyer is a genuinely funny guy who did some improbably dirty work over his lifetime. A strong dose of good humor was likely a pre-requisite for his career of restoring gray wolves to the lower-48 states. His new memoir gives an unprecedented look not only into the life and work of a modern-day government trapper, but also into the behind-the-scenes activities that made recovery of gray wolves possible in the first place.

If you are into wolves, then you may or may not have heard of Niemeyer. He was one of the guys that checked on rancher’s livestock-damage complaints in wolf country through his job with Wildlife Services, and the guy who coordinated live-trapping gray wolves in Canada to reintroduce in Yellowstone. He’s also one of the guys who shot “problem” gray wolves dead from a helicopter, and darted them with drugs to collar or relocate them.

If you love wolves blindly, then you’ll probably be perplexed by Niemeyer’s loyalties. You may think, “How could someone who works for Wildlife Services — who kills animals deemed a nuisance to agriculturalists — possibly help wolves?” The truth is stranger than fiction, the saying goes, and Niemeyer may have been one of wolves best no-nonsense advocates. Continue reading →

When wolves and livestock, or pets, come into conflict with each other, people’s tolerance for wolves on the landscape tends to decrease. Part of the problem is the economic loss to the livestock producer, so some predator conservation organizations offer compensation payments for wolf-killed livestock as a tool to increase tolerance for wolves. Additional reasons to offer compensation include attempting to reduce retaliatory killing of wolves, and an opportunity for the public to share the burden of wolf recovery.

Whether or not compensation is an effective tool is debatable. A survey study in Wisconsin investigated whether or not compensation for wolf depredation of livestock or pets increased rural citizen’s tolerance for wolves (Naughton-Treves, Grossberg and Treves 2003). The researchers found that although all the participants approved of compensation as a management strategy, it did not necessarily increase tolerance of wolves on an individual basis, and that most who had lost livestock or pets believed the payments in themselves to be “inadequate, given the emotion and years invested in each animal” (Ibid, pg. 1509). The researchers also found that an individual’s social group (whether a bear hunter, or a sheep farmer or a rancher) had a greater influence on their attitudes toward wolves than did individual experiences with wolves, leading them to conclude that “attitudes are not highly sensitive to wolf numbers and depredation frequencies” (Ibid). This is interesting because it suggests a belief pattern independent of immediate facts about wolves or experiences with wolf conflicts. A second study suggests that an unintended negative effect of compensation payments may be that such programs worsen wildlife conflicts by decreasing efforts to prevent the conflicts in the first place (Bulte and Rondeau 2005).

Frequently, in the U.S., we look to compensation programs to help shore up support for large carnivore conservation in areas where livestock producers are thought to be affected negatively by these predators’ presence. I’ve blogged in other posts about the effectiveness of different types of carnivore compensation programs, but the heart of the matter goes beyond dollars and cents. Another dimension we have to consider when studying how to gain tolerance for carnivore conservation is the human dimension. What do carnivores mean to people? How do people create meaning and attach meaning to different animals? Continue reading →

Egyptian jackal, now understood to be an African gray wolf. (Image credit unknown)

Africa has a new, old wolf. An animal that was previously called a subspecies of the golden jackal in Egypt has now been found to be a very rare relict species hiding in plain sight — an ancient gray wolf line still living today.

Previously, it was thought that the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) was Africa’s only wolf, but it is a separate species from the gray wolves (Canis lupus) that most folks are familiar with.

A new study published today in PLoS-ONE offers a heavy-weight genetic analysis of golden jackals in Africa, India, Israel and Serbia compared to gray wolves from all over the world. In the paper titled “The Cryptic African Wolf: Canis aureus lupaster Is Not a Golden Jackal and Is Not Endemic to Egypt” the authors conclude that Africa has its very own gray wolf — and it’s ancient. Claudio Sirello, the chair of the IUCN’s Canid Specialist Group and a professor in the zoology department of Oxford University, is a co-author to the paper.

The study found that the subspecies of golden jackal found in Egypt, Canis aureus lupaster, is more closely related to gray wolves of India (Canis lupus pallipes) and the Himalayas (Canis lupus chanco) than it is to other golden jackals found in India, Israel and Serbia. They also presented evidence that the animal known as a golden jackal in Egypt is also present in the highlands of Ethiopia — a 2,500 kilometer range expansion southeasterly.

The new evidence, based on an mtDNA analysis, suggests that the African gray wolf (formerly known as C. a. lupaster) belongs to an ancient group of gray wolves that clusters most closely with gray wolves of India and the Himalayas, and that this group formed prior to the radiation of gray wolves that comprised the Holarctic group we know today from Sweden, Japan, North America, and Saudi Arabia.Continue reading →

It was October 2007, and I was half-living out of my car while circumnavigating the 6,845-square mile Mexican gray wolf reintroduction area straddling New Mexico and Arizona. I was interviewing stakeholders in the wolf reintroduction project for my master’s thesis. Short on cash, I was camping out and couch-surfing for the two months my project spanned. In late October, I found myself leaving an interview near Alpine, Arizona racing against a setting sun. I had to find a camp site — quickly. The map indicated camping spots about 10 miles down the highway at a place called Luna Lake. When I arrived, the last rays were filtering through the woods, and I discovered a steel swing-gate closing off the camp sites. They were closed for winter, a sign said. (A few days earlier, I’d camped at Big Lake and the first snow of the season piled up on my tent, dumping about two soft inches that night.) With nowhere else to go, I pulled my car onto an off-road vehicle trail near the closed camping area and set up my tent just off the road. Falling asleep, I heard the woods alive with birds and insects calling out their songs.

I awoke a few hours later to a distinct howling. It trailed off to the west of me, and was answered by another howl to the south. Sitting up in my sleeping bag, I dared myself to believe these sounds were emanating from endangered Mexican gray wolves. The howls were forlorn and skipped across octaves, their range seemed musical and foreign. For two or three minutes, the animals howled back and forth from the west and the south. Then a third animal began howling with the second to the south. The two wolves’ howls twined around each other, starting low and simple and climbing upwards in pitch into a complex duet of crescendos ending in a long flat cry. I drifted back to sleep, hoping that it was Canis lupus baileyi roaming in the night. The animal’s howls woke me up three more times that night, each time the three seemed a little closer together, until all their cries sounded off from the south. The last time I heard them, they sounded much more distant as if traveling away from me.

Earlier that day, a biologist had told me that perspectives about Mexican gray wolf reintroduction varied so widely that, as he explained it, two people could be camping in the woods and hear a wolf howl. To one person, it would be the most magical, mystical experience they ever had. To the other, they’d be up all night, clutching a weapon, terrified they were about to be eaten.

I fall in to the mystical and magical experiential category this biologist described. Though to me, the “magic” was simply hearing a set of endangered large predators doing their thing in the singing wilderness, and the hope that stemmed from their presence that maybe someday they’d be back in ecologically effective numbers.

The million dollar question, of course, is how to get their numbers up into the realm of ecological effectiveness. When dealing with the social obstacles raised by people affected by wolf reintroductions (and the presence of other large predators likely to be targeted for conservation, like grizzlies, wolverines and mountain lions), one line of discussion that often comes up is that of incentives.

What incentives can we devise to spark people’s interest in conserving large carnivores — especially people who might otherwise be opposed to their presence, reintroduction or recovery? Continue reading →

If I could use only three words to describe The Wolf’s Tooth, these are the ones I’d choose: elegant, forceful and fluid.

This is a story about how two intertwined ecological concepts — keystone predators and trophic cascades — leave their signatures upon entire landscapes. The Wolf’s Tooth is authored by Cristina Eisenberg, a PhD candidate at Oregon State University who studies conservation biology. Before graduate school, she was a journalist and editor. Her dual career paths collide in The Wolf’s Tooth, and the result is a remarkable and timely story about her own research but also an entire mountain of literature that came before her.

Before I go on, some definitions may be helpful. Trophic cascades are a phenomenon whereby reactions cascade through a trophic web, or food web. Because trophic webs are really giant networks that process energy and nutrients through an ecosystem, when something causes a glitch or a change in the system it ripples through to other levels. Eisenberg studies this concept with a focus on the interactions between reintroduced gray wolves, elk and aspen and willows. This is a three level trophic web, where the wolves eat the elk which eat the aspen and willows. In this system, the wolves would also be known as a keystone species. By definition, these are carnivorous species that are the glue that bind their ecosystem together; without them, things have a tendency to fall apart or shift dramatically. Keystone species exert a disproportionately strong influence on the other species in their systems. For example, in the very real case of wolves being extirpated from Yellowstone National Park, the elk population swelled to great numbers and then ate the aspen and willow stands down to the point that new trees were not growing into mature trees because of over-browsing.

To tell the story of trophic cascades and how we know what we do about them, Eisenberg weaves fluid first-hand accounts of her PhD field work and personal experiences in nature with summaries of foundational studies. Her own field work entailed monitoring aspen and willow stands for herbivory patterns from elk, and correlating these patterns with the presence or absence of wolves and predators in the area. The scenes she bases on her field work transport the reader to the slopes and valleys she worked in Glacier and Yellowstone national parks, the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon and elsewhere. As a reader, you experience what she does: you discover a coyote carcass with its throat torn out by wolves, clear evidence of a territorial dispute; you tiptoe through a den site littered with the chew toys of wolf puppies; and you feel the hair on your neck raise when a moose is taken down by wolves only a few hundred yards from Eisenberg as she’s wrapping up a transect line. The sheer force of her narratives thrust you into the journey she’s embarked upon to understand how species interact in the web of life. Continue reading →